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      Measuring Snow Liquid Water Content with Low-Cost GPS Receivers

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          Abstract

          The amount of liquid water in snow characterizes the wetness of a snowpack. Its temporal evolution plays an important role for wet-snow avalanche prediction, as well as the onset of meltwater release and water availability estimations within a river basin. However, it is still a challenge and a not yet satisfyingly solved issue to measure the liquid water content (LWC) in snow with conventional in situ and remote sensing techniques. We propose a new approach based on the attenuation of microwave radiation in the L-band emitted by the satellites of the Global Positioning System (GPS). For this purpose, we performed a continuous low-cost GPS measurement experiment at the Weissfluhjoch test site in Switzerland, during the snow melt period in 2013. As a measure of signal strength, we analyzed the carrier-to-noise power density ratio (C/N 0) and developed a procedure to normalize these data. The bulk volumetric LWC was determined based on assumptions for attenuation, reflection and refraction of radiation in wet snow. The onset of melt, as well as daily melt-freeze cycles were clearly detected. The temporal evolution of the LWC was closely related to the meteorological and snow-hydrological data. Due to its non-destructive setup, its cost-efficiency and global availability, this approach has the potential to be implemented in distributed sensor networks for avalanche prediction or basin-wide melt onset measurements.

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          Most cited references94

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          The active and passive microwave response to snow parameters: 1. Wetness

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            Inferring snow wetness using C-band data from SIR-C's polarimetric synthetic aperture radar

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              Long-term snow and weather observations at Weissfluhjoch and its relation to other high-altitude observatories in the Alps

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Sensors (Basel)
                Sensors (Basel)
                Sensors (Basel, Switzerland)
                MDPI
                1424-8220
                November 2014
                06 November 2014
                : 14
                : 11
                : 20975-20999
                Affiliations
                [1 ] Department of Geography, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Luisenstr. 37, Munich 80333, Germany; E-Mails: m.prasch@ 123456lmu.de (M.P.); w.mauser@ 123456lmu.de (W.M.)
                [2 ] WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, Flüelastr. 11, 7260 Davos Dorf, Switzerland; E-Mails: lino.schmid@ 123456slf.ch (L.S.); schweizer@ 123456slf.ch (J.S.)
                Author notes

                External Editor: Assefa M. Melesse

                [* ] Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: franziska.koch@ 123456lmu.de ; Tel.: +49-89-2180-6687; Fax: +49-89-2180-6676.
                Article
                sensors-14-20975
                10.3390/s141120975
                4279521
                25384007
                b1c5c4c1-9f6b-485c-854a-8050fc6a2364
                © 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

                This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).

                History
                : 01 September 2014
                : 21 October 2014
                : 28 October 2014
                Categories
                Article

                Biomedical engineering
                gps,low-cost,l-band,snow wetness,signal attenuation,permittivity
                Biomedical engineering
                gps, low-cost, l-band, snow wetness, signal attenuation, permittivity

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